Sewerage revamp leaves butcher out of pocket

A Mount Isa businessman says his shop has taken a hit from council works along Camooweal Street.

The council is spending $27 million to upgrade the sewerage system in the city.

However, butcher Barry Sloan says the works blocked the front of his store for several days last week, preventing customers from being able to stop or park nearby.

He says the works also knocked out his phone line on Thursday which was not fixed by Telstra until yesterday afternoon.

"We can do between a 100 customers, 150 customers a day and I think we did under 50, 50 or 60 on one day," he said.

"We get a lot of phone orders coming in for the weekend, station orders and stuff like that.

"Friday afternoon is a fairly good day for us, people putting orders in for the weekend but they obviously couldn't get through."

Mount Isa Mayor Tony McGrady says he was unaware of any issue with phone lines from the sewerage works but he says the works are important and need to be done.

"I sympathise but you know $27 million is what we're spending on upgrading the services of our city and if there's a few people inconvenienced I offer my sincere apologies and I regret the situation but sometimes when you're doing these massive projects some people are inconvenienced," he said

"It's a massive job, we're going right through the city and from time to time there will be some people affected adversely and all I can do as the Mayor of the city is to apologise to those people but at the end of the day, at the end of the day the job has to be done."